


the man who lived

by songfic_suites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-One Night Stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songfic_suites/pseuds/songfic_suites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As always, Harry goes into the Forbidden Forest for one simple thing only to face another, more complicated one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the man who lived

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing in relation to the Harry Potter series and J.K. Rowling's work.
> 
> For Matt,
> 
> Happy New Year!

 

 

 

Harry stood at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and felt as if he were watching his younger self stand (and hesitate) in the exact same spot. He met Voldemort here. He died here. Yet he’d been told that Luna had gone to meet with some centaur friends of hers in the forest, though he knew they had all moved on after the war.

It was a sunny day for Hogwarts with term about to begin. The last thing Harry needed was another one-night stand flashed across the papers and passed around in front of him. Ginny and the children had seen enough. Yet Harry kicked himself for still hesitating at the edge of a stupid, harmless forest. He was a trained Auror for Merlin’s sake, supposed to be Minister someday, if he hadn’t walked away to become a professor. Not to mention, all the truly dangerous creatures left the forests after the war. A whole new department was created to round them up and place them in secure zoos, some of them he personally worked in. _C’mon Harry_ , he told himself and stepped into the Forbidden Forest.

Once past the tree line, Harry cast a simple tracking spell that pointed the way and as he walked, the light bouncing on the ground like a ball, and he occasionally looked up to watch the treetops sway and block the sun. He hadn’t walked far when he heard murmuring and Luna’s high-pitched voice. He stepped on a loud twig. The voices stopped.

“It’s me,” Harry yelled, stepping into a small clearing with a brook running through it. If anything intended to murder him, might as well get the attack part over with. Yet next to a large, round stump, Luna stood next to a massive golden brown centaur. He cast a glare in Harry’s direction, nodded at Luna and thundered off into the forest, melting into it and disappearing. Luna sighed and plopped down on the stump, swinging her legs.

“Hello Harry,” she said, smiling at him.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess they’re still angry about Voldemort and the war.”

Luna shook her head. “They’re not mad, can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The staleness in the air,” she said. She walked over to the brook and sat on a large rock and began taking off her shoes. “They’re ashamed Harry,” she said over her shoulder.

“Oh.”

“The smell is rolling off you too Harry,” Luna said.

Shit. Right. The reason he was out here. Harry ambled over, lightly overstepping roots and the thick moss on the ground.

“Look, about last night—“

“You know why I like this spot?” she asked.

Carefully, her feet bare, Luna dipped a toe and then plunged both feet into the brook. She gasped a little and smiled. Yet Harry noticed the sunlight on her face and remembered the way she looked at him at that party last night—

“The whispering frogs?” Harry suggested, clearing his throat. No point in being gobsmacked after ditching her this morning. He was thankful she didn’t shove him in the brook when he came closer. That was as bold as he was willing to be today.

“No,” Luna said, “There’s no awkwardness in this forest. This place in particular. Everyone and everything is completely, utterly themselves. Without worry that a wonderful night after a drunken office party will reach the Daily Prophet.”

“Luna—“

She held up her hand.

“I understood when you left before I woke up.”

Harry stared at the water running over feet. Her toe up his pant leg was what started this thing in the first place. Damn her lovely feet, he thought.

“We’re not kids anymore, Harry. There is nothing more to live up to,” she said.

Harry sighed and looked at his hands. The scar from Umbridge’s quill, the scratches and the lost bits of skin from his Auror days. “I wish that were true.”

Luna turned and pulled him down onto the rock, grasping his hands and tracing over the scar on his right. She kissed him softly on the cheek.

“They’re gone, Harry,” she said.

“Who, the centaurs?”

“Yes and no,” she stared out into the forest. “Many of them will never return but a few check in with news from time to time.”

“Then who?” Harry asked. He stared, focused on the heat covering his hands from hers.

“All the people who told us what we were. Every last one is gone.”

And Harry remembered standing with Luna at her father’s funeral and her remarking that they were both orphans now. He remembered sifting through the Hogwarts rubble room by room with her and the DA and how she didn’t speak for weeks. Then he left for Auror training and never looked back. Until he couldn’t stomach it anymore.

He knew he would always come back to Hogwarts. Yet he noticed at the meet and greet last night that majority of the teachers now were either in the DA or fought in the war. All of their teachers had died or retired if they were lucky.

Then he thought of Dumbledore, as he always did when he thought of death, and the apology he never told Ginny, not his friends, not anyone.

“We have a course meeting pretty soon, are you going?” Harry asked suddenly.

Luna stared and then turned away, looking at her feet in the water, nodding.

“Want to go to Hogsmeade after?” he asked.

Luna nodded again, smiling slightly, and they both fell silent. Harry didn’t remove his hands. He didn’t manufacture an excuse and bury himself in paperwork. He forced himself to sit with Luna and listen to the wind in the trees, the water running over her feet while she absentmindedly ran her fingers over his scars without looking. And he tried, though his instincts said run, to sit and be Harry again.


End file.
